Beachcomber

The news that Dunkin Donuts hastaken over two adjacent storefrontson Beach 129 Street generatedlots of excitement and someire. There are those who believethat the donut store will be an evilforce on the small shopping block,bottlenecking traffic further andputting the "ma and pa" stores onthe block out of business. Bothgroups are entitled to their opinions,but we have received somecomplaints that Barbara Larkin,the president of the Belle HarborProperty Owners Association (norenters need apply) sent out a letterto her members urging them tocontact their elected officials inorder to stop the donut shop fromopening its doors. There was someanger from members of her associationthat she had no right tosend out that letter without firstpolling her membership. Theycontend that no leader has theright to go off and speak for theentire membership without firstfinding out their thoughts on thematter. In any case, the donutshop is a done deal and Barbaraand others who want to keep thedonut shop off the block might aswell wake up and smell the coffee- - metaphorically, of course.

A man who once spoke for President George Bush has come out into the open with the claim that he was ordered to lie to the press, and there fore to the public, about the Valerie Plame case. Scott McClellan said that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney urged him to deny that top aides Karl Rove and Lewis (Scooter) Libby revealed the identity of the CIA spy to the press. "There was one problem with that," McClellan wrote. "It was not true." He added, "I had unknowingly passed along false information and five of the highestranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff (Andrew Card) and the president himself." Bush's new press secretary, Dana Perino, denied that Bush told anybody to lie. Who do we believe?

The findings are in. Whites andminorities have roughly an equalchance of being stopped by policeofficers and questioned on thestreets of New York City, but officersare more likely to frisk,search, arrest or give summonsesto blacks or Hispanics. That isaccording to the Rand Corporationstudy that was paid for bythe city and released recently. Thestudy also found some interestingstatistics. Slightly more than halfof the 508,540 stops by police lastyear were made by 2,756 officers,about 100 each. Fifteen of thoseofficers - six of whom are assignedto precincts in southern Queens(but not in Rockaway), were morelikely to stop blacks and Hispanicsthan whites, while ninewere more likely to stop whitesthan minorities. The NYCLU, ofcourse, calls the entire report a"whitewash." That group willprobably never believe that copscan do something right or thatoffenders have done somethingwrong.

Airlines are in the business to make money. While they are forced to worry about safety, it's the money, honey, that drives the industry. When Congress removed decades-old limits on how many planes could land during peak afternoon and evening hours at JFK Airport earlier this year, American Airlines, Delta Airlines and others immediately added dozens of flights (and lots of revenue), creating huge delays at the airports. Adding flight corridors on the east coast is a little like adding several lanes to the Long Island Expressway. Adding those lanes might increase capacity, but if they all end at the Midtown Tunnel, you're going to be in for a long wait to get through that toll. One long-time pilot summed it up best. "You can't put ten pounds of s- - in a five pound bag," he said. The numbers of landings and takeoffs at Kennedy surged more than 20 percent, limiting the ability of controllers to handle flights at JFK as well as at the two other local airports, experts say. The answer is to limit the number of flights arriving at and departing from all of the local airports in order to allow for safe and sane travel periods.

You have to love Vince Castellano,who bills himself as the largestSection 8 real estate broker inRockaway. The Community Board14 member was quoted in a piecein the N.Y. Daily News by BrendanBrosh (who was once a Wavestaffer) as calling Beach 116 Street"a slum." According to the article,Castellano suggested he wouldn'tmind if Beach 116 Street fell intothe ocean. "The entire block has tobe, in effect, demolished andrebuilt," he is quoted as saying. Inreality, it is only the eastern sideof the beach block that is the problem.The remainder of the streetprovides much-needed services tothe west end residents. The commentscame during a CityPlanning Commission report onhow it plans to rezone Rockaway.One of the city's plans calls forBeach 116 Street and adjoiningstreets to become an R7A zone,which would allow for eight-storybuildings such as the OceanGrande. Those plans, however, arepresently largely illusory. Wewon't know what the real plansare until sometime in March orApril of next year. Then, thoseplans have to go through a reviewprocess that typically takes severalmonths. Don't start jumping outthe eighth story window just yet ifyou don't like tall buildings. Wehave a long time to go before anyrezoning plan becomes a reality.

Rockaway dodged a bullet over the weekend when an oil spill dumped globs of heavy, black oil onto beaches in neighboring Long Beach and Atlantic Beach. The Coast Guard suspects that the spill came from an oil tanker passing through the area. The Wave did a quick check of east end beaches on Sunday, but could find no oil.

For only the fourth time in history,the Flushing Remonstrancereturns to Queens as the boroughcelebrates the document's 350thanniversary. The petition is consideredto be the first recordeddefense of religious freedom inthe new world. Written in 1657, itpredated the Bill of Rights bymore than 100 years. It will beexhibited at the Flushing branchof the library through January 7.